The past exhausting week and good stuff too.

My husband is a freakin' genius. He set up a separate computer and consolidated all of our itunes libraries onto one. Between us we had like 4000 songs or something. We were getting to the point where we were having to give each other cd's of stuff we were downloading so we wouldn't be buying anything twice. So, he loaded everything onto one main server and put it in the living room. He just set up wireless internet in our house so he put a laptop on the desk in the living room and hooked the computer up behind the tv so it comes through our speakers. Now we can play our itunes on the stereo speakers. It is so cool! He is basically just taking the knowledge he uses in his everyday job and applying it in a different way.

Now we are all hearing new stuff around the house. It is so cool because we are totally sharing all the new music we have each found in the last few years. Forest has a lot of good new music too. Actually for a kid his age, he has a really varied tastes in music. He seems to give everything a good listen from rock to rap and all the other scenes in between and take what he likes. It is pretty neat. I definitely think ability to explore new genres and his tastes in music are inspired by James.

This has been a pretty exhausting week. I have been getting everything caught up. I have been totally out of sorts with my office in transition so basically I have just set up the desk and all the tedium that goes with it. The jewelry stuff is all still scattered around on the other two tables. I have so many ideas in my head right now for jewelry but I can't make it so I just sketch it out and hope the inspiration comes back in the future!

I am leaving today to stay with my mom for the next few days. I don't know if it will be 3 days or a full week. It just depends on how she is doing after the surgery. I must confess that I am a little nervous about it all. I know millions of people have surgery every day but you just don't think so much about it until it's someone you know. I also know that this is a fairly common surgery for women so I should not be so worried. I also think being so busy all week and out of sorts has made me skip some of my exercise over the last week plus I am in between training sessions with my trainer so maybe I just needed that outlet and it was missing. I only made it to the gym twice this week. I am not worried about it though as we are due to start up as soon as I get back.

Anyway, I did get to hang out with Jennifer and her girls and see Melissa for a bit. I also got into P&L to drop off and pick up. Unfortunately I missed getting together with friends on Thursday night. It was something I was super getting excited about but when the time came I just realized I wouldn't be good company because I felt physically exhausted and mentally stressed out.

Man, James keeps making references to music videos from the 80's and I realize I have no reference for that. We didn't have MTV in my small town. All we had was this show called Friday Night Videos. I totally stayed up to watch it! But, I don't know if I want to remedy my lack of reference. Do I really want to start a whole thing of watching 80's videos? I recently noticed that VH1 is showing a lot of 80's videos during the week day. Maybe I should check it out. Some of these videos he mentions sound interesting. I feel like I missed out on some cultural milestone! ha ha

My hometown has come along with the technology. Now they have cable and fast internet connection there. So, I will be keeping in touch over the next week.

Making Necklaces with Chloe and Olivia

My friend Jennifer came over yesterday with her girls, Chloe and Olivia and we made play jewelry after they jumped on the trampoline!

The girls picked out their beads and I strung them. Chloe strung one for her friend Nicole all by herself. Very talented!

Chloe and Olivia are cool sisters! I had fun!

Weekend with my family

After waiting 72 hours for the floor to fully dry I moved all my stuff into the new space and realized I had no idea how to arrange it. So, it may be a little while before I "unveil" it to the world! Right now it looks like a big junk pile. But, with all the stuff in the room, the orange is not quite so overwhelming. Thank goodness.

Spent the last few days at my parents house. My sister was in from Colorado so we all got together. Drove up through an eerie thunderstorm on Thursday night. On Friday my mom, sister, mammaw and I went to a flea market up near Fort Worth. I took my newfound toy, my digital camera, and took pictures of design elements that inspired me. Man, I am totally in love with the camera right now! I bought a disk to hold more images before I left. I took 204 pictures over the weekend! It is so fun when you know you can erase the bad ones. I played around with the settings and used macro and av settings to get close up images of the flowers around my mother's house. Unfortunately, I didn't figure those things out until Saturday so some of the images I took at the flea market came out a little fuzzy. Those pictures are mostly for inspiration anyway. While I was there I bought some great old jewelry including some neat old beads that are red, white and blue. I also got a cool vintage clock for $2 and a pair of horn rimmed glasses for $3 that I really want to have my prescription put into. I have been wanting some cool new glasses but everytime I find a pair I like, they are too expensive. I recently found this guy down the road who repairs glasses so it gave me the idea to find some neat old glasses and have them fixed up for me. I think it will be cheaper. Ideally it would be neat to have multiple pairs of glasses and change them out like accessories. Someday I will get the surgery for my eyes but until then, I think I really need some fun glasses!

On Saturday Crystal, mom and I hung out around the house all day. I took tons of pictures and we made a fun lunch together. We started off the morning with the whole family having coffee together on the back porch. My parents have such a nice place for that! It is so beautiful there in the morning. There are birds and a nice breeze, my mother's flowers and yard are all so lush. They really have a little piece of paradise! Later on I went up to the high school weight room with my brother. That is one cool thing about small towns - people trust each other to just give the key to the weight room to former students. Anyway, it was fun to work out together. My brother is in such great shape! He gave me some good advice and showed me his workout. I did a couple of sets and then just played with my camera. In the evening there was a reception for my dad's cousin's son who just got married. We had so much fun! It was held in an old American Legion hall where I remember going when I was little for family reunions. I danced with my dad, sister and brothers all night. We danced the waltz, two step, cotton-eyed-joe and Jeff taught me a new dance called the half step. They had kegs of beer and barbeque. It was such a great experience and brought me back to my roots. I love that I have a family I can go out and have fun with like that. I feel very fortunate. When we got home my parents went to bed and the four of us kids stayed up pretty late drinking and talking and laughing our asses off.

I came home on Sunday, tired as hell, moved my stuff into the new space and laid on the bed the rest of the day!

This week I really need to accomplish a lot. Next week I will be back at my parents house as my mom is having a hysterectomy and I am going to spend the week with her just to be there in case she needs help. Hopefully I can get the rest of the book case painted and the room kind of organized before I leave again next Sunday.

I set up a Flickr account with all my pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dewdropfalling/

Painting Progress

Got the first coat of paint on the floor last night. It looks so neat, I just had to post a picture...

Painting is hard work

Uhg. I am so tired and achey from all the painting. I forgot how labour intensive it is! How did I ever paint a whole house full of walls, edges and corners? I finally finished the walls. It took three coats of the orange to cover the light blue underneath. I still have to finish the bookcase but can do it later on. I need to move on to painting the floors today. I mopped the floor 10 times yesterday and still came out with yucky water. I guess I will just hope the primer helps it stick. Otherwise I will have one of those peely floors.

I think it is a good sign that you are hanging out with the right crowd when you announce you are painting your studio orange and everyone thinks that is a good idea. Here are some pictures of the progress for ya...

Ta Da!

This is James' new office!

And, this is mine!

I am tired! I will finish painting tomorrow. G'night!

Moving this weekend.

We are moving the studio space this weekend. Actually my stuff is all going to be moved to the dining room holding area because we have to do a lot of painting and ripping up carpet to do before we can put my stuff in there. Unfortunately, the rest of the concrete floor wasn't so great so we decided to paint the floor. I was having so much trouble figuring out what colors to use. I don't want to repeat any colors I have already used in the house so I was thinking of purple or cobalt but wanted to used a color that would inspire me. Melissa came over for coffee yesterday morning and we came up to look at something here in my studio. Suddenly, I was pulling stuff out of my closet to find a frame for the print she brought me from Mexico. I was picking her artistic brain about color meaning so she looked up color theory on the internet and when she read what orange meant, I was like, that is exactly what I want! I have always secretly loved orange....

"Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation... Orange increases oxygen supply to the brain, produces an invigorating effect, and stimulates mental activity...orange is symbolic of strength and endurance."

Later on we went over to the hardware store to picked up some paint samples and look at flowers. I decided to paint the floor dark green. Once I settled on the color scheme, I started seeing green and orange everywhere!


Okay so she left and I kept working on cleaning out my craft closet. Man, I had a lot of stuff in there. I started making a box for goodwill and setting aside fabric to give away. It felt really great to get rid of things. I made piles of things I still want to pursue and got clear plastic storage boxes to organize them: collage paper, collage objects, quilting stuff, sewing & embroidery notions, frames, etc.

James came home and we looked at the paint samples together. We decided to base the colors on my shoes. He started ripping out carpet and tack board in his old office and bringing his stuff up to his new office closet while I continued to bring my stuff downstairs. Last night we went to the hardware store and picked up supplies and paint. I am so excited to see how it turns out! More to come...

On the home front, Zaphod is feeling much better. It just turned out to be a case of dog diarrhea that cleared up in two days. I read up on it and I guess it is pretty typical because dogs eat such weird things.

However, Forest hurt himself at school on Thursday trying to do a skateboard trick. We had to take him to the minor emergency clinic. They did an ex-ray and found that he had a minor fracture on his fibula. It was so swollen! He has to use crutches and wear a boot for two weeks. Poor kid!

Getting caught up and Forest's Books

Oh my goodness. I have been catching my shit up this week! While I was having so much fun last week stuff was piling up here. Today I spent the entire day going through mail from the last month. Please tell me other people do this too. There is just so much junk mail, that I can't deal with it on a daily basis so I just let it pile up in the big red bucket. It's always a nice feeling when it's done and your bills are paid!

I updated the website, did some marketing work and cleaned a little more around the studio. Scrubbed the shower (the most dreaded job), cleaned the house. I also worked a little more on organizing my workspace for the move. Also had Emily over for more photos. Contacted another customer who will be modeling for me in the future.

I did a huge brainstorming session over the weekend and wrote a lot of notes. I made myself some pretty cool lists regarding my business. I am trying out a sort of weekly business to do list. Will keep you posted.

Today started off pretty tough. Zaphod got sick and pooped all over the carpet in James' office, the one that I am moving into. He was sick all day so we may need to take him to the doctor tomorrow, poor thing!



The mess was pretty gross! We ended up cutting out the squares of carpet and just throwing them out. One good think about cutting them out is that I got to check out the floor below. The concrete looks pretty good. I was planning on ripping out the carpet anyway and putting down a clear coat. James thinks we may still have some stain but I really don't want to go to that much trouble! I just want to slap up a new coat of paint, do the floor and move in. I just don't feel like I want to take a lot of extra time because it will be distracting from my biz list!

I have to weigh in with the trainer tomorrow and I dread it because I am just at 193. Finally back down to what I was at the end of February. But, I guess that is good since it is only the midway point through the month. It means I am halfway to my goal of 190 by the end of April. I just convinced myself it is okay.

Sunday night I went to Hatha Flow with Sarah. It was such a great class! It feels so good to be challenged. I can definitely feel my body getting stronger. I was pretty sore the next day too. Man, if you would have told me a year ago I would enjoy getting sweaty and athletic so much I would not have believed you. After yoga Sarah and I went for coffee and had a really nice chat. She is so cool.

Tonight while James cleaned his office out I went through Forest's old books. It is kind of hard to let some of them go. When he was little I was so interested in influencing his mind with really cool art. Some of the illustrated books we got him were so neat! We also got him cool learning books about tools, bugs, history, knights, etc. Oh! And the cute little Maurice Sendack books and Shell Silverstein (keeping those). I also kept some of the older vintage ones for collage. I kept a couple for sentimental reasons and the rest are going! I am giving them away so other kids can enjoy them. I just have really great memories of reading to Forest every night at least until he was old enough to read them to me.

Moving to a new workspace

A note of warning - this blog entry is pretty dry. Sorry for that. I lost the first two extensive blogs I wrote while trying to post them. This is the best I could do on my third try. From now on I type everything out in Word before putting it here! It was a pretty frustrating experience.

This has been an interesting and busy week. I spent a lot of time with friends this week which is always restorative. Lunch with Kristin, dinner with Wendy, flea market with Melissa and her friend Mary Ann, lunch with Dixie and Lisa and brainstorming session with Victoria. It wasn't a typical week, social-wise. Anyway, I enjoyed myself a lot this week. The only hard part was that my trainer seems to have gotten me mixed up with another of her clients who is into body building because she really stepped up the weights this week. It was a little overwhelming! I was so sore for the entire following day after both sessions this week.

We are considering home school for Forest next year. He is a bright kid but has some trouble ignoring distractions in school and unfortunately his grades suffer for it. We think it might be very good for him to study in an environment where there will be no distractions. He has a big social network so we don't worry about him socially. He has friends from his old school and this school as well as some other high schools. He is a pretty socially networked kid! We are looking at a few different curriculums. What is cool is that he will be able to take classes at ACC or other places around town for some of his electives. We are pretty excited about this and feel it is the very best thing we can do for him right now.

I will have a new studio soon because James and I are going to switch offices. I have been going through the process, mentally and physically of organizing everything for the move. So far it has been an excellent exercise for me! You know I am always struggling with balancing everything and being more organized. This whole process has made me think about how I can lay out my workspace to be more conducive to getting a lot more done in a day. I have also been writing down all the things I would like to cover in a weeks time for my business to kind of figure out what to focus on each day. Anyway - it's just good! My floor is already cleaner since I have moved all my show props to a downstairs holding area and shredded the stack of credit card bill, offers and financial statements that were piled up under my desk. The open space in my office is already clearing out my thinking. Sometimes I think it is just hard to work in a cluttered environment so hopefully I can correct on that!